"Yes I know Perrault's listening! Tell him I don't give a fuck!"
"Fuck me." Wolf muttered as he walked in. "What's she yelling for?"
Grimm shrugged. "She's pissed."
"You don't say."
"Tell those idiots to shove it up their ass! Tell Perrault, Akerson, Hidson, tell them all! I'm not sending my guys alone- FUCKING PRICK!"
A phone flew through the door at the dartboard at the back of the room, shattering on impact. Ash came out, red in the ears and sneering something fierce. Neither Wolf nor Grimm dared stand in her way as she made full stride past them.
"I'll be back in a few." Ash stated as she left the room, venom dripping from her voice. She was fully kitted and ready to fly. Ash damn near ripped the door to the flight line off its hinges as she made full stride for her Mudhen. Slung underneath the centreline pylon was a massive bomb. It was a GBU-28: a five thousand pound bunker buster, more than twice the displacement of the two thousand pound GBU-24.
Ash approached one of the airmen hovering around the aircraft.
"Hey Shots!" Ash called out to one of them. "Is she good to go?"
"Topping her off then she'll be all green, ma'am." Corporal Matthew Shots, the senior airman on the scene, replied.
"ETA on that?" Ash asked as she mounted the ladder.
"A minute, if that." Shots replied, grabbing onto one of the red safety pins hanging off a Sidewinder on the wing. "Are you going up?"
"Yep." Ash called as she swung her legs into the cockpit and began her startup procedure. The Mudhen's dual turbofans spooled up with a high-pitch whine. Once the fuel pump was withdrawn, the weapon safety pins removed and the wheel chocks pulled out, Ash started rolling down the taxiway. The back seat was conspicuously empty.
WARDOG 1 / BLAZE / F-15E
Hamilton burst into Wardog's squad room, sweating and puffing in his service dress uniform.
"Zoomer." Hamilton spoke in between gulps of air. "Where's Blaze?"
"She walked out five minutes ago with her kit, major." Wolf answered. Hamilton cursed and wiped the sweat off his brow.
"Goddamn it. Did she take anyone with her?"
"I dunno. Grimm and Nagase are still here. I haven't seen Kitagawa recently."
"If she's doing what I think she's doing." Hamilton finally collected his breath. "Either we'll see Blaze in a couple of hours or we'll be marking her grave."
11 OCT 2010
Pacific Ocean
Maintaining a steady speed of four hundred knots while cruising across the Pacific with a bunker buster, two Sidewinders, two AMRAAMs and two external fuel tanks, Blaze was gritting her teeth and already beginning to regret her decision of one manning an F-15E deep into enemy territory. Still, it was better that only she died as opposed to all seven members of Wardog Squadron.
The briefing, if it could be called that, had been painfully clear. After Yuktobania's attempted attack on Bassett Space Centre, the President himself had wanted a strike mission conducted deep inside Yuktobanian territory to prove that Osea could reach out and touch targets in the enemy's backyard. That in of itself wasn't the issue. The issue arose when Perrault gave her the order to conduct the strike using only their squadron's assets. Three F-15Es and a single F-16C. It wasn't happening. Not against a bunker in the Yuktobanian capital, Cinigrad.
As far as could be told with existing intelligence, Cinigrad was surrounded by several batteries of the S-400 complex, accompanied by short range Tor missile systems. There was an air force base in the city servicing MiG-35, Su-35 and Su-57 fighters. And all of that wasn't even mentioning all of the air bases, carriers and ground based air defence systems that they would have to cross along the way to the capital.
So in common fashion for the headstrong captain, Blaze was undertaking the mission with no wingmen and no support. Hell, she didn't even have a WSO. If she even made it to Cinigrad, she was going to have to eyeball the drop. And on top of all of that, if she ran out of fuel over Yuktobania, she was as good as dead.
Happy thoughts Ash, happy thoughts.
An hour's flight until she reached solid land. Blaze settled in for the flight. She noticed a rolling front of storm clouds to her west-north-west some thirty minutes later. The thunderstorm that had passed over Sand Island some three days earlier. If that layer of clouds persisted over the Yuktobanian mainland, she may have had a chance to slip past enemy SHORAD.
With fifteen minutes to go to the coast and her radar warning receiver starting to light up with the detection of S-300 and S-400 radar systems, Blaze dove down to the deck and concealed her aircraft below the radar horizon. The waves were particularly uninviting today. Blaze saw the tops of mountains appearing beyond the horizon. She was rapidly approaching. Her approach was going to take her right over a port and a major city. Hopefully there weren't any Buks or Tors in the area. As the coast fast approached, Blaze pulled up to avoid hitting skyscrapers that lined the city. A beach and then an entire city passed by underneath the Mudhen. No new radar pings. Either there was no military presence in the city or the SAM systems didn't have their radars turned on. In any case, Blaze was in the clear for now, even if her low level pass had woken up whoever was still awake.
"Wardog 1, this is Thunderhead over Link 16, do you read, over." Thunderhead's grating voice rang in via the satcom system. Although Thunderhead and his Hawkeye were more than likely somewhere over Sand Island, he could still reach out to aircraft on the other side of the ocean.
"Thunderhead, Wardog 1, reading you loud and clear." Blaze answered Thunderhead's call as she ascended up and then down a valley corridor that led her inland.
"There's still time to pull back. Are you sure you want to go through with this?" Thunderhead asked, quite clearly concerned for Blaze's safety and wellbeing.
In reply, Blaze pushed forward on the throttle, pushing it into mil power.
"Wardog 1, passing checkpoint Alpharius, proceeding to checkpoint Brutus." Blaze was all in as she passed over a mountain range and down over a mixture of grass plains and wooded forests. The fact that she had yet to alert attention from any interceptors was a good sign thus far, but Blaze still had a very long way to go. Her flight path would be bringing her through these grasslands, another mountain range, a barren wasteland that was commonly called the tundra, the desert, and a final mountain range. In a way it was like Wardog's trip to Heierlark, just a lot more fright with danger.
The Dresdene mountain range afforded Blaze some concealment from what appeared to be an S-300 battery in the vicinity of a nearby city. Sticking close to the bases of the snow topped mountains, Blaze weaved in and out of them on a north-west heading until she had escaped the radar range of the S-300 SAM site and made her way over the mountains and into the Yuktobanian tundra. As snow became more and more visible until white was the only apparent colour for miles, Blaze dropped her now empty drop tanks. Her wings being freed of excess weight made it much easier to pull through turns.
As Blaze flew over the tundra-covered oblast of Glubina, she noticed a facility that nearly blended in with the spring snow. Intrigued but unable to spare enough fuel to divert and investigate, Blaze left a mental note and flew onwards.
Sometime later, she was met with red sands instead of blinding white snow. The iron rich sands of the Jilachi Desert. Blaze almost felt like she was on a tour flight. However, the airspace was anything but friendly. Her RWR alerted her to the presence of multiple SAM systems and radars. Pantsir, S-400, Buk, Tor, Shilkas, the whole umbrella of the Yuktobanian Air Defense Corps. There was no space to hide. Blaze put the Mudhen as close as she dared to the Jilachi sands and prayed that nothing looked in her direction. Fortunately, reprieve came in the form of what appeared to be a canal. Blaze flew down into it so that she was below the line of sight of any radar mounted at ground elevation.
Unfortunately, Wardog Leader wasn't the only thing in that canal. As she pulled through a turn, Blaze stumbled upon a pair of warships travelling east through the canal. They were only small ships, a duo of Buyan-class corvettes, but Blaze basically gave the two corvettes a haircut. There was no way in hell they wouldn't have noticed the intrusion of an Osean fighter aircraft. Blaze increased her speed and made like hell to get the fuck away from the ships. The Mudhen's afterburning engines roared. Blaze kept those burners lit until she reached the end of the canal, where she pulled out of the waterway and back over solid ground. A bunch of ground based radars were live and scanning out to her rear. Rather bizarrely to the Mudhen pilot, there was no sign of a fighter scramble to her rear. Counting her lucky stars, Blaze flew out from the western side of the Jilachi Desert and through the last significant landmass in her way. The Vladimir Mountains.
While the Vladimir Mountains didn't cover as wide an area as the Dresdene mountain range or the various mountains that lined the Yuktobanian east coast, the mountains were individually a hell of a lot taller. Some of them rose very steep into the skies like smokestacks. As Blaze weaved in between the bastards, she laid her eyes upon Mount Ferris. The tallest mountain on the Verusan continent, coming in at a peak height of seven thousand five hundred metres above sea level. Blaze passed underneath the shadow of the mountain several thousand metres below its peak. The top half of the mountain was covered in snow.
While the scenery was pleasant, it was also safe for the time being. No sign of radar guided SAMs, AWACS or fighter patrols in the region. Blaze exited out the western side of the Vladimir Mountains and entered her final attack path. Running alongside and due west of the mountains was the Capital Line Highway. As the name implied, the highway led straight to Cinigrad. Instead of flying directly above it, Blaze flew a couple of kilometres south of the highway, staying in line with it via waypoints on her aircraft's GPS. Rather fittingly, the last leg to the capital for the bomb drop was the most dangerous. There was nothing to terrain mask against and the area was well covered by an S-400 network. Blaze fully expected a missile barrage to light her up and blast her out of the sky. Much to her surprise, it never came, even as Cinigrad itself rapidly became visible in the distance.
Blaze took a deep breath before committing to her attack. The target, a reinforced command bunker, was lined up in front of her. To get a shot on the target, she had to fly in above the city's skyscrapers, dive in from above and release her bomb. It was a fool's errand at best. Blaze flew over the suburban outskirts of the capital. The height of the buildings gradually increased until Blaze was outright flying over skyscrapers. The target was coming up. Blaze took one final deep breath before yanking back on the stick and climbing up, pulling an uncomfortable number of gees as she did so. As Blaze rolled the aircraft over, she spotted her target using the Mark One Eyeball. Blaze levelled out and switched off the bomb's mastersafe function.
"Here we go." Blaze muttered to herself. Her HUD was displaying the predicted point of impact for the bomb. She lined it up with what appeared to be a simple concrete structure in the middle of an otherwise quite well ornate area. Blaze pressed the trigger. Clunk. The aircraft suddenly responded better to manoeuvres without a giant five thousand pound weight underneath it.
"Bombs away." Blaze muttered to nobody in particular as she pulled out of the dive, pulling even more gees than before in the process. Her radar warning receiver was going crazy. The S-400s in the area had spotted an Osean fighter and were volley firing at it.
All the way back home, within the command and control centre at Sand Island, Colonel Perrault, Major Hamilton and Wardog's homebound members were watching a live feed of the attack via overhead satellite. Blaze shot by the bunker she was targeting in the blink of an eye. A bomb appeared in frame for a fraction of a second before it slammed into the outer face of the bunker, caved in the concrete and penetrated it. Smoke rapidly started billowing out of the hole left in the wake of the GBU-28.
"Boom." Kitagawa remarked. Blaze had actually managed to hit the target.
"Now here comes the hard part." Hamilton muttered. Blaze had destroyed her target, but now it was a question of wherever she would survive the retribution that was to follow.
"Colonel Perrault, sir." A junior OADF officer called over the base commanding officer. "Satellite feed is picking up Fulcrums sortieing from Cinigrad Air Force Base, and S-400 fire from surrounding divisions."
While hiding amongst civilian buildings was very much frowned upon, in the heat of the moment it was the only choice Blaze had to defend herself against S-400s at what effectively amounted to point blank range for those SAM systems. Blaze turned dead north and flew underneath the Cinigrad skyline. She had hit the target and she was able to turn worth a damn now, but now the entire local Yuktobanian Air Force regiment knew she was there. Turning east towards Osea was not an option. She'd have to fight the entire damn country and she knew she didn't have the fuel to even get out of the country, let alone return all the way home to Sand Island.
Her best option was to head north out of the city and out over the Fuscum Sea. It was a long shot, but if she made it that far she could fly out to neutral Emmeria and hopefully take asylum there for a while.
The first wave of 9M96E missiles lost their target amongst the backdrop of the city and prematurely detonated to prevent themselves from causing collateral damage. Out of sight of the S-400 radars, Blaze ripped north with her burners lit, exiting the outer confines of the capital. Her radar warning receiver lit up for the millionth time. MiG-35s that were actively scanning for her. Blaze could outrun them in a dead sprint, but she couldn't outrun their missiles. Blaze hoped that they didn't immediately spot her. That hope went right out the window when the first pair of whatever was coming locked her up.
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP-
Missile in the air. The throttle was already jammed as far forward as it could go. Already dangerously close to the ground, Blaze dropped a few metres until she was putting her aircraft at a very real danger of inhaling foreign objects and debris. Ten kilometres ahead was a river that led north. Until that came up, Ash hugged a highway that headed north. She was damn near taking the roofs off of cars trekking in and out of the capital. Blaze looked back. She could see the contrail of the missile tailing her closing in fast. She started dumping chaff canisters to throw the missile off. That method didn't appear to be working.
Blaze looked forward. Coming up ahead was an intersection that led off the highway and out to the surrounding suburbs. Part of that intersection was a bridge that hung above the highway itself. Blaze braced herself, pulled back on the throttle, popped the airbrake and aimed to fly under it. Shadows obscured the cockpit for a tiny fraction of a second. There was a teeth rattling boom overhead. Blaze came out from under the bridge unharmed, her heart beating a mile a minute. What she had thought of as an absolute last second defensive manoeuvre had worked. The missile had hit the bridge. The bank of the river was coming up on Blaze's left. She lifted away from the highway and slipped into the river. The difference in elevation between the water's surface and the surrounding land afforded her some concealment from the Fulcrums chasing after her. Blaze took the opportunity to throw the Mudhen's burners back on and press open the gap between herself and the MiG-35s.
While the terrain ahead couldn't be considered a proper mountain range, it was better than the flat plains that surrounded Cinigrad's immediate area. Blaze popped up from the river and disappeared behind those hills. The last she had seen, the MiG-35s were still chasing after her, but she had created enough of a gap to be outside of their effective weapons range and she was still moving faster than them. She'd have to slow down at some point, however. The Mudhen could carry a lot of fuel, but she had just crossed over most of Yuktobania at high speed and low altitude. Blaze definitely didn't have enough fuel to reach the Pacific border on one tank of fuel. At the rate she was burning through it, Blaze was now questioning if she even had enough fuel to cross the Fuscum Sea to Emmeria.
Fortunately, as Blaze pulled up to briefly look at the electronic warfare environment, she found that there were no nearby radar emitters. The Fulcrums had withdrawn. That wasn't a good sign on its own because faster MiG-31s were more than likely spinning up to intercept her, but Blaze took the opportunity while nobody had eyes on her to change up her course and get to the northern coastline.
Ten minutes later, running low on fuel and now sitting on maximum dry power, Blaze finally reached the Fuscum Sea. She wasn't fully out of danger just yet. As Blaze went feet wet, she pulled back on the stick and started to climb. Travelling at high altitude would give her Mudhen's engines better mileage. Partway through that climb, her RWR was tripped by yet another flight of aircraft. S35. Su-35 Flankers on her rear left quarter, heading towards her. Blaze flipped the throttle forward into afterburning. Blaze absolutely didn't have the fuel for this, but running out of fuel and being forced to eject over the ocean seemed like the better option over catching a missile. She ran like hell away from the Flankers.
Halfway through the trip from Yuktobania to Emmeria, the critical warning warning rang. Blaze was now running on fumes. She had gained a considerable distance on the Flankers, but they were still after her. Blaze pulled back on the throttle and got on the emergency guard frequency. Hopefully somebody on the Emmerian side was listening.
"Any station this net, this is Osean fighter Wardog 1, mayday mayday mayday, loss of engine power, I say again, loss of engine power." Blaze made an emergency declaration. Right on point, the Mudhen's engines cut out. She was out of fuel.
"Wardog 1, SOCOG, radar contact. Confirm emergency, loss of engine power?" To Blaze's surprise, an Emmerian had replied, and much further to her surprise, promptly.
"SOCOG, confirmed, loss of engine power. One soul onboard, no fuel, no fuel. I will attempt to ditch out in the vicinity of 28 degrees, 5 minutes north and 81 degrees, 6 minutes east. Approximately a hundred kilometres south of the Emmerian coast line. Wardog 1."
"Wardog 1, all heard, one soul, will ditch out in the vicinity of 28 by 5 north, 81 by 6 east. We will dispatch search and rescue. SOCOG." The air traffic controller on the opposite end of the radio confirmed.
"SOCOG, all correct. Wardog 1." Blaze replied. She levelled out the aircraft in preparation for ejection. Blaze grabbed the ejection handle and took a deep breath before yanking on the handle.
BOOM!
In an instant, the canopy exploded over the top of her and Blaze was dragged out of the aircraft and into the slipstream by the ejection seat. Suddenly unbalanced with the sudden removal of steel from the front of the aircraft, the unpowered Mudhen began its descent towards the ocean surface. Blaze's parachute successfully deployed.
Ash had just survived a suicide mission. However, that didn't come with a feeling of elation, rather one of anxiety. Now she had to pray that the Emmerian search and rescue services could find her before any Yuktobanian helicopters or warships did.